TriumphAnt

This entry will include an update on a couple of recent items, friends and readers (and readers who are friends).

First of all, I was prompted to add an update because that part of my last entry on winter sliding, of all things, attracted not one, but two follow-up e-mailed messages (one of which you already know about because it was graciously cc’d to the BD flock).

But first, by way of warm up in this (in Ottawa, anyway) period of anatomy-crisping COLD!: a brace of ringing endorsements, the first musical, the second cinematic.

In a couple-months-ago e-mailed bleat, I lamented the fact to a Baby Duck friend and family that the musical soundtrack for the movie “50 First Dates” included not one of the three songs I enjoyed most from the movie.

One that blew me away was an astonishingly lovely take -- with ukulele accompaniment -- on the Harold Arlen / Yip Harburg tune that became Judy Garland’s signature, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”. That prompted an e-mail from the son of a Baby Duck regular, who responded with a delighted, “Oh, that’s Iz Kamakawiwo’ole!” (Shows you the kind of eclectic following we have here. How many people do you know who can just pull a name like that out of neural storage?)

That led me, in very short order, to Google the name and discover that this (now late) giant of a man is considered a musical legend in Hawa’ii and not just for this tune. When Iz (for Israel, but he Googles as Iz) died, his memorial was held in the State capital’s rotunda, and Hawa’ii’s flags flew at half mast all over the islands.

Well, as the now delighted possessor of two of his albums, “Facing Future” and “Alone in Iz World”, I can vouch for the apparent fact that it appears someone slipped the voice of an angel into this gargantuan body during Iz’s all-too-short time on this planet.

Now I won’t entirely distance myself from the possible influence of a glass of small-batch bourbon while I write this, but as I write this, Iz is happily singing in the background on my CD player and his music is truly wonderful to listen to. On a few tunes, he is backed by what one might traditionally expect to find on a popular album these days – a drum set and back-up singers. But most of his songs are simply Iz and his ukulele. Which frankly means two voices, because he makes the ukulele sing.

Many of his lyrics are, surely to no one’s surprise, rendered in the vowel-heavy Hawa’iian language. But hearing the words sung by a native speaker, I find it fascinating to hear how some of them require vocal “hiccups” or breath catches in the middle of words, in order to effect the change from one sound to the next.

Lyrical purists might cringe a bit at the liberties he takes with “Over the Rainbow”, but the fact that it remains such a beautiful work in his possession makes his free-wheeling take on the lyrics immediately forgivable.

Here’s how he marries its words with the George Weiss / Bob Thiele song that Louis Armstrong made his own, “Wonderful World”, on “Facing Future”:

“Somewhere over the rainbow
Way up high
And the dreams that you dream of
Once in a lullaby ii ii iii
Oh, somewhere over the rainbow
Blue birds fly
And the dreams that you dream of
Dreams really do come true ooh ooooh

Someday I'll wish upon a star
Wake up where the clouds are far behind me ee ee eeh
Where trouble melts like lemon drops
High above the chim-en-ey tops that’s where you'll find me
Oh, somewhere over the rainbow bluebirds fly
And the dream that you dare to, oh why, oh why can't I? i iiii

Well I see trees of green and
Red roses too,
I'll watch them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself
What a wonderful world

Well I see skies of blue and I see clouds of white
And the brightness of day
I like the dark and I think to myself
What a wonderful world

The colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces of people passing by
I see friends shaking hands
Saying, 'How do you do?'
They're really saying, 'I... I love you.'
I hear babies cry and I watch them grow,
They'll learn much more
Than we'll know
And I think to myself
What a wonderful world (w)oohoorld

Someday I'll wish upon a star,
Wake up where the clouds are far behind me
Where trouble melts like lemon drops
High above the chim-en-ey top that's where you'll find me
Oh, somewhere over the rainbow way up high
And the dream that you dare to, why, oh why can't I? I hiii?

Ooooo oooooo oooooo
Ooooo oooooo oooooo
Ooooo oooooo oooooo
Ooooo oooooo oooooo
Ooooo oooooo oooooo
Ooooo oooooo oooooo”

(You really have to hear it – all those cheerios at the end are nothing on the printed page, but to die for in audio form.)

And it is also on “Facing Future” that Iz takes an old anthem from the also-late John Denver, “Country Roads”, and turns it into a love song to his home:

“Almost Heaven, West Makaha,
high-ridge mountain, crystal-clear blue water.
All my friends there hanging on da beach,
young and old among them,
feel the ocean breeze.

Country road, take me home,
to the place I belong,
West Makaha, Mount Ka'ala.
Oh, take me home, oh, country road.

I heard a voice,
in the morning calm, she calls me,
as though to remind me of my Home far away.

Driving down the road,
I feel the Spirit coming to me,
from yesterday, yesterday.

All my memories hold Heaven on high,
brown-skinned woman, clear blue island sky.
Daytime sunshine, oo-ooh so bright,
midnight moon a-glowing, stars up in the sky.

Country road, take me home,
to the place I belong,
West Makaha, Mount Ka'ala.
Take me home, take me home, country road.

I hear a voice, in the morning calm, she's calling,
as though to remind me of my Home far away.
We driving down the road, I feel the Spirits coming to me,
of yesterday, yesterday.

Almost Heaven, West Makaha,
high ridge mountain, crystal clear blue waters.
All my friends there sitting on the beach,
young and old among them,
eating fish straight from the sea.

Country road, take me home,
to the place I belong,
West Makaha, oh, Mount Ka'ala.
Take me home, oh country road.

Country road, take me home,
oh to the place I belong.
West Makaha, Mount Ka'ala,
take me home, oh country road.

Country road, oh take me home,
yes to the place, to the place, I belong,
West Makaha, Mount Ka'ala,
take me home country road.

Country road, take me home,
to the place I was born,
West Makaha, Mount Ka'ala.
Take me home, country road.......

Huuhuu. Huuu-tah.
Good fo' be back.
White san', clean watah.
Hô boy, the mountain...feel the makani...
whew, what a place.”

Wonderful music. I’m an instant fan.

= = =

Cinematic recommendation: “The Best of Youth”:

Steel yourself. This is actually a six-hour long movie. That’s right – 360 odd minutes or thereabouts. But “The Best of Youth”, even though it started out as an Italian television mini-series, had such high production values that someone apparently recommended to the producers that they enter it in an upcoming film festival. The proverbial rest is history and “The Best of Youth” has since gone on to win many film festival awards and glowing reviews. It’s a simple premise. We join the Carati family in the mid-1960s, and two brothers in particular, Matteo and Nicola. Throughout the tumult of the next 45 odd years or so of Italian political and industrial history, the two eventually travel widely divergent paths as one goes on to become a psychologist and the other, by way of the army, becomes a policeman. For the film’s six hours, life happens. Comedy, tragedy, love, loss, birth, death. That’s life, right?

The film-making in this work, especially its frequent “You were there; now you’re here” location changes, is really seductive. But after all they do have Italy and Sicily to work with – along with one early stunning side trip to an idyllic setting in Norway – and from the streets of Milan and Florence to a Sicilian seaside café to the stunning Tuscan countryside, this (overused word alert!) compelling family story sucks you in and sweeps you along through dozens of “Oh WOW!” visual panoramas.

In rental form, “The Best of Youth” arrived as two DVDs and I think we watched it over five separate viewings. I have read that theatres tend to divide it over two consecutive evenings. But I think I would find two successive sub-titled three-hour movies a bit wearing.

So – highly recommended. Rent or borrow it. And wallow in it. See if you don’t come away thinking that the world would be a whole lot better if everybody spoke Italian.

So, on to the updates…

= = =

In response to my sliding rant about a national (Canadian) family safety agency’s call for mandatory helmet use by recreational sledders, long-time friend Heather e-mailed (as everyone on the “Reply all” end of the message no doubt painfully observed (“Painfully” referring to the likely reaction to its content, I rush to add -- especially by readers of the male persuasion, not the fact of simply having received the message) a “News of the Weird” type of story. It was a recollection of her having edited a medical article that documented a wincing tale of a young tobogganer’s admittance to a hospital emergency room with a chunk of wood lodged in – oh let’s just not bother repeating the specific location here. Suffice to say that had he a merely passable voice, I think that, post-surgery, he might well have been launched immediately to fame and fortune with the Vienna Boys choir.

All I can say is the thought occurred to me that, regardless of what this accident says about the risks of winter sliding, I can’t see that any helmet on the face of the earth would have prevented it – unless somehow one opts for making the entire downhill run with the helmet firmly clamped between one’s upper thighs.

And on the same subject, I received a message from another friend and regular BDer who described a recent weekend sliding with his very young daughter, and watching as, on one run, she narrowly avoided a collision with a tree.

So let’s call it a tie score. I will happily concede everyone’s right to slide while wearing whatever protection you prefer, and even more rigorously I will hereby affirm that I will never argue with, challenge or ridicule a parent’s right to deck out one’s child with equal security. But I will also continue to mutter about the over-regulation of some activities by well-meaning but swat-a-fly-with-a-cannon-way-too-heavy-handed interest groups. After all, I slid helmet-less all my life and it never had any effects on me.

After all, I slid helmet-less all my life and it never had any effects on me.

After all, I slid helmet-less all my life and it never had any effects on me.

After all, I slid helmet-less all… (* WHACK! *)

See you next time.